Just a word to say that later today, I will make available a short text to introduce the new features in the Beta. The text will be easy to find on the site.

Two more words only, for I guess ‘Slaw’ is not the appropriate place to brag about our good work.

The development team is exited by the reaction to the addition of the RSS feeds (even though, we are aware that the feeds are not working properly in this Beta. But don’t worry, they will.). In our view though, the main changes in the Beta relate to the version 2.0 of our search tool, Eliisa, and to the addition of a PDF version for the judicial decisions.

To answer Simon Fodden question about when the beta phase will give to way to the next step… Well, the Beta will stay around for a couple of weeks, let’s say till the end of the month. More preciseley, we are planning to switch the Beta as the production server around Saint Joseph’s Day and the vernal equinox, in other words, around the official beginning of spring. According to Wikipedia, Joseph would be, in the Catholic tradition, “the unofficial patron against doubt and hesitation, as well as the patron saint of fighting communism, and of a happy death.” Interesting, but quite a program. So I guess that instead of putting this beta right away on March 19; if everything go well, we will instead more safely launch the new CanLII around March 21st. And, Yes, in year 2007.

I’ve been in Europe all week, and my sole access to information has been La Republicca and 2 minutes of excruciatingly slow dial-up access. So I haven’t been able to see the new CanLII interface. But at the Law Society’s Solo and Small Firm Conference Carol Curtis tantalizingly described the much more robust search engine of the new Beta Canlii.

It’s been frustrating up to now having to cope with the old interface’s limitations to simple “A or B”, “A & B” and “AB” type searches.

As CanLII improves searching and builds its archive backwards, it challenges the commercial services to increase the value that they are adding to justify the fees they charge. CanLII seems to be raising the stakes.